How children's TV favourite Steve Backshall fights chronic pain on a daily basis to take on dangerous wild animals

Deadly 60 presenter Steve Backshall has been stung and bitten by wild animals - but tackling chronic pain from an ankle injury has proven his toughest challenge. Here he tells JULIE CROSS about coping with persistent pain and how meditation has proved to be the best medicine...

Steve Backshall pictured at home in Buckinghamshire with a cage structure around his foot. It was used to create a 2cm gap in his ankle joint that was then injected with stem cells

A household name for anyone with children, he has been billed the new David Attenborough but with a Steve Irwin twist.

But his hands-on approach to presenting wildlife TV means he has been bitten and stung by all manner of dangerous creatures. He required stitches after a caiman crocodile clamped its jaws around his leg while he was wading through water in Argentina.

He also took part in a coming-of-age
ritual in the Brazilian Amazon, where he allowed himself to be bitten on
the hands by 400 bullet ants - the sting of which is the most painful
of any invertebrate on Earth.

But
neither of these events compare with what he’s suffered in the last two
and a half years, living with chronic pain after sustaining an injury
while mountain climbing.

In 2008 he fell ten metres onto a rock while climbing in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire. He broke two bones in his back and his left leg and dislocated his left ankle.

‘I
stopped to rest during the climb and the next thing I knew I was
falling. My foot took the full force of the fall, and my heel bone went
through the bottom of my foot,’ says Steve, 37.

‘The pain was like nothing else. I was absolutely beside myself.’

Fellow climber Tarquin Cooper, tried to support Steve’s weight during an hour-long struggle to get back to the car.

‘Every time I put my foot down I passed out,’ recalls Steve, who lives near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.

His back healed within six weeks with his strong back muscles providing a natural corset to support the damaged vertebrae.

However, his ankle re-set in the wrong position. There followed three operations, in which doctors performed keyhole surgery to remove bone and 60 per cent of his cartilage, in the hope it would give the ankle back its function.

With hardly any soft tissue between the tibia, the leg bone and talus, the foot bone which also forms the lower part of the ankle joint, he was in agony every time he moved his foot, as bone scraped against bone. He has been suffering with the injury ever since.

Avoiding a downward spiral

It is believed one in seven people in the UK suffer from chronic pain, generally classified as pain persisting for more than three months. It can have far-reaching effects, leading to job loss, family breakdown and depression.

Dr Austin Leach, a consultant in pain medicine, from the British Pain Society, says because pain is subjective, two people with the same injury or condition can report totally different experiences.He says having a positive outlook can vastly reduce chronic pain.

‘The key to understanding pain is understanding that emotion and past experiences play just as important a part as the physical aspect,’ says Dr Leach.

'It's very easy for those with chronic pain to get caught in a downward spiral.’

Steve Backshall holds a Baboon Spider which can inflict a painful bite. Despite being stung and bitten, the worse pain the adventurer has experienced has been from an ankle injury

He says continuing to work, when pain allows, and gentle exercise are two of the most important things you can do.

‘Many people give up their jobs, stay indoors, become more isolated and depressed, which actually increases their pain, because pain is linked to negative emotions.

‘In some cases there is no cure. That realisation can actually lessen the pain, because that understanding can be the turning point.’

Steve Backshall said the first month after he had the cage placed on his ankle was agonising

When the body hurts it sends a signal from the source, along specialised nerve fibres, through the spinal cord, to part of the brain that deals with emotion.

Once there, how it interprets the signal either helps to reduce or increase the pain.

To add to the problem, those with persistent pain can find that the cells in their nerve endings in the spinal cord and brain also become more sensitive, producing an increased feeling of pain, or a continuation of pain, even when the original source of the pain has healed.

Following the accident Steve was
given Voltarol, a super strong anti-inflammatory, which only took the
edge off the pain and swelling.

He
took this drug for two and a half years until December when he had his
last operation, which he hopes will encourage some of the damaged bone
and cartilage to re-grow.

He was advised to avoid any form of anti-inflammatory as they can prevent that from happening.Instead
he was given Oxycontin, which is an opiod and related to morphine. It
mimics the action of ‘feel good’ chemicals called endorphins and helps
to block pain signals.

‘That
did the trick, but I felt flat and heavy in the day and slept ten hours
a night. It really knocked me for six,’ says Steve.

However, he has had to stop taking
that drug too because of work commitments. He is currently in the middle
of touring with his Wild and Live show.

‘Standing
in front of an audience of up to 1,500 people being asked wildlife
questions, I need to be on the ball mentally or I’d make a right fool of
myself,’ says Steve.

‘This
is a particularly painful time in my treatment but the only option I
have is to use relaxation techniques. I need to have a clear head.’

He has also tried acupuncture, but he
says he felt little benefit, and is relying solely on meditation
techniques he picked up while staying a Buddhist retreat in Thailand
when he was 18.

Mr Backshall comes face to face with a Sloth Bear while filming CBBC¿s Deadly 60 programme. He hopes a fourth operation will finally relieve him of chronic pain

‘I was there for a week and I wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone, or make eye contact,’ he recalls.

‘It was really hard. The silence drove me nuts. But I’ve often used what I learned there to help me during difficult periods of my life and this has been one of them.’

Dr Leach says relaxation techniques can have an extremely positive effect on pain and are very much in line with modern advice.

Staying positive: Mr Backshall said it was important not to fall into a downward spiral

When someone feels intense pain, they tend to panic, taking shallow, rapid breaths, and tensing muscles, which all help to put the body on high alert, meaning it experiences pain in the deepest way possible.

Meditation produces chemical endorphins that reduce pain

People who meditate have been found to have lower levels of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline in their bodies when they feel pain.

Those who meditate also produce more of the pain reducing chemical endorphins, which effect the brain’s response to the pain signals, lessening the pain.

‘Meditating distracts the brain from the pain signals and as someone gets more skilled at relaxation techniques they can actually boost the level of endorphins in the body, which is like your own internal morphine supply, says Dr Leach.

‘This is a fantastically complicated process and there are many other brain chemicals involved, and which is the subject of further research that could one day result in new pain relieving drugs and treatments.’

As for his ankle, Steve still hopes
to make a full recovery. He had a fourth operation privately in
December, overseen by leading orthopaedic surgeon Prof Roger Atkins,
from Nuffield Hospital, Bristol.

During
the operation, his ankle was fixed by ten pins, running through his leg
and bone and kept in place by a cage structure called an Ilizarov
frame, which was been built around his foot.

Then over the following month he wound the frame open to create a 2cm gap in the joint, a process known as distraction.

No fear: Steve with a hippo - an animal responsible for more deaths than lions and tigers combined

The space in between was injected with stem cells, taken from his bone marrow and cultivated to create cartilage cells and growth factors, which is present in the blood and encourages re-growth. It’s a procedure that has not been widely practised, therefore there are no guarantees.

He is now halfway through the four-month process.

‘During the first month, I was in a lot of pain, because of the unnatural stretching. I can’t put into words just how painful it was.’

If his ankle does not heal, his only other option is to have a fusion, which is when the two bones are fused together, vastly restricting movement in the ankle, something that would have a devastating effect on his lifestyle.

‘My life revolves around being outside, cycling, climbing, kayaking and running,’ says Steve. ‘I couldn’t bear to have any of those things taken away from me.’

It is estimated there are more than seven million fractures in the UK every year, many causing lifelong disabilities.

'Whenever I feel negativity closing over me like a dark blanket, I use the power of positive thinking to pull myself out'

For those with conditions or injuries for which there is no cure, there are a number of treatments besides painkillers, including electrical stimulation of the pathways of the spinal cord, which help to block pain signals getting to the brain.

People can also benefit from acupuncture, physiotherapy and relaxation techniques. Psychologists are useful in helping people come to terms with their condition and encouraging them to stay active and social.

Steve admits: ‘I have felt gloomy about my situation from time to time but whenever I feel negativity closing over me like a dark blanket, I use the power of positive thinking to pull myself out.

‘I tell myself to “snap out of it”, to “pull myself together” and that “there are people in a lot worse situations than myself”.

‘Getting outside, where you can feel and see life all around, which is something I rejoice in, helps. There’s nothing better to lift dark thoughts.’

Steve says he can meditate anywhere as long as he removes himself from distractions. He says he clears his mind of all thoughts and concentrates on breathing in and out. As well as helping him feel more in control of his body, after about ten minutes he feels less pain.

He said: ‘Meditation has been a powerful tool in my life, but I’ve never needed it more than I need it now.’